i just wanted to say i feel safe here and while this addiction/disorder feels like it takes over my life more times than not, im so glad im not alone with these feelings and actions. it makes me feel often not human, dealing with something like this and feeling like i have no one to talk to about it sometimes. my bf helps a lot as he also deals with it to a degree. just wanted to say that and send love to everyone here struggling.

What do I say when someone asks me this? When it’s a friend I just tell them the truth. But when it’s a co-worker, especially one I don’t know well, I don’t want to tell them that the scars on my face are from obsessively picking. I don’t feel I owe them the truth….I also kind of think it’s rude… I’m feeling really insecure because another person I barely know asked me about it at work today(in front of several others). What is your experience with people asking about your pick spots? What do you say?

Does anyone else have any slightly off triggers. This comes after an hour and half picking session that reflectively I think was triggered by pain else where in my body. I had been having tummy cramps all evening and I think this had a natural stress response in my brain which for my brain is straight to picking as a respond to stress. Just a musing…

I’ve always had ocd tendencies and never really did anything about it. I moved on from skin picking to other things in high school and then my bf dumped me right out of high school and I started obsessing about controlling my food, weight, macros etc and had something like to do all the time and stuff and then I got LICE and fell off completely with the OCD-like control over my food and stuff I started eating uncomtrollablt and picking at my head every second of everyday. Got rid of the lice fast but now it’s been almost a year of this obsessive head picking. Lowkey be contemplating like weekly because I feel like I have no power or control over myself or my life and everything is just going to shit and here I am making myself bald at 20 :( never had dandruff before or a thinning hairline and now I do and it’s so bad I am so sad I hate myself so much right now but I know I shouldn’t because of the picking like I was looking at everyone’s posts on here and I feel so bad people are going through this too I don’t know anyone irl who is and I feel for yall it sucks so hard and I feel so ugly and out of control

I’ve had this issue forever. My mother tells me I destroyed my baby mattress by picking a hole into it. There were holes in the drywall by my childhood bed. I vividly remember the sensation of pulling the thick threads out of my woven blanket and eating them. I’ve always been a nose picker and a booger eater—even still. I remember sitting on the school bus having nosebleeds.

My self-mutilation really started with picking the fibers from my upper arms around middle school—then hair pulling, just for the sensation; then pulling it to eat the follicles; then using a sewing needle to pick at my scalp.

I didn’t get facial acne until I was an adult, and it’s been hell the entire time. I’m currently lying in bed red-faced, with more than a dozen open sores after a particularly bad spell with hormonal acne. I’ve got a massive raw lump on my jaw from a decade-long recurring cystic acne spot that I know doesn’t pop. I just grind away at it.

My thumbs are kind of decent right now, but there are times when multiple layers are missing, and I’m red and bleeding. It makes doing anything so painful, but I just keep picking away.

I don’t know when or how it happened, but for a while now, I’ve left my back alone. I used to have massive bleeding holes on my shoulder blades that would show through my shirt. I’d be sitting in class or at work, fully drilling into myself with an audience, and it just didn’t even register that I shouldn’t be doing it.

I bite my toenails off.

I use needles and eyebrow razors to peel my foot calluses off and eat them.

I scrape the plaque off my teeth so often that they’re rigid and ugly.

I pick and eat any and every scab I can.

I pluck hairs from my hands with my teeth.

I push my fingernails into each other to separate and peel off the layers.

Even the steering wheel of my crappy old Chevy has chunks missing from it.

I had a brief time where I was obsessed with tonsil stones, and I made myself so sick and sore after jamming Q-tips—and God knows what else—down my throat to relieve myself of tonsil stones that I’m sure weren’t even there.

I have large breasts, and I get clogged pores underneath them every day. Every day after work, I sit in bed and pop out dozens of little fibers from under my breasts and around my areolas. They refill the next day without fail. I do this in front of my partner. I’m shameless.

There are periods of time when I’m okay, I wish I knew what to do to make those times last longer and come more frequently.

Unmedicated and formally diagnosed three times: BPD, cPTSD, ADHD, Major Depressive Disorder, and Bipolar Disorder.

Thanks for letting me share. Good luck, friends.

I've been picking at my skin for as long as I can remember and this is the first time i've posted on the forum. I've recently started wearing lower cut tops and i'm starting to realize how obvious the giant red spots that I can't stop picking are on my chest. I'm a woman so there's already a bit more attention to my chest than i'd like there to be but this just calls so much more attention. My chest is filled with large, white and red scars from picking and I consistently get pimples on my chest all the time. Is there any advice on how to make the spots go away? I've been trying to stop picking as much as I can but it's just something that relaxes me. I'm really at a loss and just feeling so self conscious so any advice is appreciated! :)

I got nails recently in order to stop picking. I have keratosis pilaris and cannot pull myself away from it. Having the acrylics make it harder to grab at my skin, though i still can for a few of them. Im hoping this can help decrease the amount of picking, eventually to stop it all together.

Has anyone else tried this? How did it go?

I severely pick at the ingrowns in my legs and my belly button area with tweezers to dig them out. Now the area is just full of small scabs and raw skin. I’ve been using hydrocortisone and polysporin but am wondering what I can do so this doesn’t scar. I have olive skin tone and everytime I cut myself it leaves hyperpigmentation.

Any other ingrown hair pickers here?

I don't know what my skin looks like without scars anymore.

They say life passes, and it's true, I can see that on my own body: the worn bleach that remains on the once green ends of my hair; the cuts that healed and nearly vanished; the still pink skin underneath a scab.

I desperately try to nourish my skin, mind and soul with the last specs of hope I have, but, somehow, it seems like it's to no avail.

It all hurts. Crying, sweating, touching, bathing, breathing. All of it hurts, stings, burns.

The cycle never ends despite my many attempts. No one understands it. I don't want to try anymore. Maybe letting it consume me will take less of a toll on me.

When will I live a normal life? When will I no longer need medications? When will I feel like myself? When will my own nudity be anything other than shame?

Time passes. Yet I still find myself making the same mistakes over and over again and it hurts. It's an unexplainable pain. Maybe people think I'm crazy, and I'm starting to believe it.

No sane person would hurt their own skin at any minor inconvenience. I know I'm not sane, and maybe I've never been, but I'm tired. I've been trying to be strong for too long but I feel like I'm starting to lose. But who's winning?

I want to win, but my parhaps opponent is myself. Yet I don't feel like it is in fact me. I want to know her: her who has been damaging me.

"Know your enemy, and know yourself, and you need not fear the result of a thousand battles", he said.

I have fought a thousand battles. Was it in vain? Maybe it was pure pride and vanity. Makes sense: vanity is vain.

But is wanting a breather vanity? Is wanting to live a life freely purely pride? Is wanting not to be a hostage of your own skin anymore a luxury?

If so, I want that luxury. I don't want to be afraid anymore. I want to live.

Please.

My picking has been BAD lately, and I mean bad. This is due to stress and anxiety at work and in my personal life lately. My acne is the worst on my chest, shoulders, and back. I keep It covered by wearing long sleeves majority of The time but the one day I decided to try being confident and wearing a lower cut top, the minute I arrive to work, my coworker horrifically remarks “your acne looks horrible! What’s wrong with you?” And proceeds to go into detail about how bad it looks and overall just making me feel like a monster. This happened a week ago and I’ve been in a really low place ever since. I’m aware it looks terrible, I can’t help it, I’ve tried to stop, why would she say something like that? I tried to brush it off.

Until today. My other coworker approaches me and informs me that same coworker has been talking about my acne behind my back with my other coworkers, saying how gross and dirty it looks. This really did me in, and I was in a depressive episode I couldn’t pull myself out of the rest of the day. I told my general manager and hope it will be handled accordingly. I just want to know what I did to deserve this, I only treat her with kindness. I feel like an ugly monster, I was already insecure, but man it’s so much worse now. Why does my acne bother my coworker so much? It’s not even her problem, her skin is perfectly clear. I just don’t understand any of this.

I (21F) have been compulsively picking my face for 5 years now. I’ve attempted to quit many times, with a variety of methods,. I am tired of lying to myself that “this time I will actually quit.”

I am finally considering therapy, but I’m honestly worried I’m a lost cause lol, and I’m scared of wasting my money.

I was wondering if anyone here would be willing to share abt their experience with therapy for dermatillomania. What kind of therapy? How did you find someone knowledgeable about BFRBs? Have you found it helpful? What in specific do you work on with your therapist?

Things I have tried on my own include but are not limited to

• A support group
• Pimple patches, gloves, fidgets, aquaphor
• Urge surfing/ sitting with the urges
• Tracked no-pick streaks and set rewards
• Read multiple books about BFRBs and how to heal from them
• Kept a picking log with information like how long my episode was, what I was doing before, how I felt, etc.
• Progress photos to remind myself how much I’ve healed & how bad it looks after I pick
• Listed my triggers & what I could use to replace the urges & kept distractions on hand
• Changed my routine to limit direct hands-to-face contact
• NAC (due to ADHD I always forgot to take it and then I lost the whole bottle… i should try again), SSRIs, ADHD medications
• Talking openly about my disorder with friends & family

Some of these have helped but I always end up relapsing and then giving up until it gets really bad again.

I honestly don’t know what a therapist could do for me beyond holding me accountable — which I definitely need, but idk if that is a justifiable reason to spend all that money.

I have made progress on my own in terms of being gentle with myself, working through shame, and going out despite the state of my face. Which I am proud of myself for. But as I’ve entered my 20s, I suddenly scar much deeper, and I’m terrified to watch my skin permanently deteriorate even more than it already has.

lets all acknowledge that this has been a rough start to the month (american peeps im talking to you 🥲😔) like many of you, my stress and anxiety manifests as picking. with all the chaos surrounding the election, im reverting to old habits. i just wanted to drop by here and share some accountability. despite no pick november- my face is feeling pretty raw lately! but we are just one week into the month... so im going to try again tmr :) i hope all of you who may have picked today and feel like all progress is lost... theres always tomorrow ♥️ stay strong friends! we have got this

Ive literally never posted on reddit only read posts sorry if this formatted weird. Im trying to figure out how to stop skin picking without just stopping triggers or replacing with an even worse habit. I think stopping triggers (like my skin being clearer for example) is helpful but I just have too many that I can't control at all times (seeing blemish, absentmindedly touching skin, directly using it as a coping mechanism when stressed, tired so automatically do it if I go in bathroom, being inseucre about something ELSE in my appearance not skin, etc). The problem is when I try to resist the urge to do it I almost just keep thinking it in the back of my head until eventually I just do it. I feel like also it's procrastination like if I am picking my skin i'm more likely to stop if I have something "good" waiting but if im in the middle of homework, cleaning, anything I don't like it gets harder and harder to resist it